Focus: Reconstruction and Resettlement: An opportunity for long-term development

Resettling and reintegrating refugees in Eritrea

Caritas resettlement project, Kambodian, Tadjikistan

Dissemination of adobe technology in a housing reconstruction programme in Peru

Reconstruction in Alto Mayo, Peru

Coping with disasters

Review

WAS: new jobs with old machines

The Voi Tanzania / Bondeni upgrading project

Artefact

CAS news

RAS

Review

Shelter Provision and Settlement Policies for Refugees

Dr. Roger Zetter

pp. 29-106 in: Studies on Emergencies and Disaster Relief Report
No.2

Nordiska Afrika institutetP.O.Box 1903 S 75147
UppsalaSweden

For those who want to read more on the developmental approach to
disasters and emergencies, the above state-of-the-art review by Roger Zetter
will provide a good starting point. It challenges the relief approach to shelter
provision for refugees, and provides useful arguments for more long-term
solutions.

The review starts off by looking at shelter provision, making
the case that refugees or disaster victims are mostly perfectly capable of
dealing with that themselves, provided the right support is given.

It then moves on to settlement planning, looking at the
limitations of and potential improvements to current practice, and again
particularly looking at the potential of refugee involvement in planning their
settlements.

In the context of the current theme of the BASIN News, chapter
6, entitled From Relief to Development: a macro-economic perspective
is perhaps the most interesting. Dr. Zetter makes the case that the
development-led approach to refugee shelter is not new, and was suggested as
early as 1961 in the UN General Assembly; but it is only in the mid 1980s that
this approach gets more attention, in various conferences and papers. The
chapter mentions several of the negative impacts refugees may have on their host
regions: for example, investments may be diverted, labour and commodity markets
distorted, scarcities created, and infrastructure overloaded. But it also offers
very strong arguments for potentially positive impacts, made possible by the
disruption and change created by disasters, which could help to kick-start the
economy. Housing and construction are generally recognized as catalysts of
economic growth: reconstruction and resettlement of refugees can play the same
role. It is also recognized that a bottom-up approach is likely to be more
effective; refugees or disaster victims should participate in the process. The
rehousing of displaced persons in Cyprus is used as an example of a successful
development-led approach.

As a state-of-the-art review, this report also contains an
extensive bibliography, which invites further reading.